A calling party that does not connect with a called party will often be invited to leave a voice mail message for the called party. More recent developments enable the delivery of visual voice mail to the called party. Such access is typically provided on a person-to-person or peer-to-peer basis, meaning that a single calling party may leave a single voice mail message to a single called party.
In established wireless telecommunications networks, mobile devices connect to a voice mail box using circuit switched networks. For example, a calling party will initiate a circuit switched connection to a called party. Upon receiving a notification (i.e., a no answer) from the called party, the calling party will establish a circuit switched connection to the voicemail box of the called party. From there, the voicemail message may be stored on a visual voicemail (VVM) server which has access to a visual voicemail to text transcription (VMTT) server. The VMTT server may then deliver the text version of the voicemail to the called party via SMS or email. This methodology consumes valuable resources of the network provider.
Limitations on the features of voice mail platforms and devices further inhibit the growth of messaging. For example, there are inefficiencies in processing voice mail messages based on network architecture, thereby consuming additional resources.